188 



BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 



[BuU. 188 



Such income as gets through to Shonto Navahos in cash is likely to 

 be saved for use in purely native commerce (see "Native Commercial 

 and Professional Enterprise," pp. 125-127) and for shopping trips to 

 Flagstaff, in neither of which is credit allowed. In their dealings with 

 Shonto Trading Post, on the other hand, local people are usually 

 quite content to stretch their credit as far as it will go (see below). 

 When they spend cash it is likely to be chiefly for fill-in and impulse 

 purchases, and for gasoline, which is sold only for cash. 



BOOK CBEDIT 



"Book credit" is the term commonly applied to all unsecured ac- 

 counts, records of which are kept in conventional retail salesbooks. 

 The designation serves to differentiate these from pawn (i.e., secured) 

 accounts which are recorded only on tags attached to the collateral. 



Book credit, like cash sales, is a fairly recent phenomenon in the 

 Navaho trade, which probably accounts for the reasonably systematic 

 way in which accounts are recorded. Early stores necessarily re- 

 quired collateral against any and all credit (see Franciscan Fathers, 

 1910, p. 493). The development of imsecured credit in later years 

 has been a measure of increased stability in Navaho society and 

 economy, together with increased dependence on the trader. In the 

 long run these conditions have proved to afford better credit insurance 

 than any collateral. 



Shonto Trading Post allows book credit against nearly all pre- 

 dictable income received in Shonto community, and up to the expected 

 limits of the income itself. Chiefly included are livestock production 

 (lambs and wool), wage earnings, and unemployment and relief 

 checks. The number and value of all outstanding book accounts at 

 Shonto Trading Post in February 1954 and in December 1955 are 

 shown in table 32. 



Shonto Trading Post classifies all book accounts according to the 

 four categories shown in table 32, keeping them in separate file 



Table 32. 



-Outstanding hook accounts at Shonto Trading Post, February 7, 

 195i, and December 15, 1955 



> See below. 



